Christmas in Germany: Berlin: Days 1 and 2

On Christmas Eve, we rode the high-speed rail from Heidelberg to Berlin. It was snowing HARD, so our four-hour trip turned into six and a half hours on the train. Fortunately, we had first-class tickets and kept a booth to ourselves. We even ordered food for lunch: a strawberry salad for me and a ham sandwich for Michael. The train ride was stressful, because they kept making announcements in German, but not English, and we didn’t understand what was taking so long or why we kept skipping stops.

We arrived at the Berlin AM Main station after dark and tiredly climbed off the train. No more trains were running, so we took a cab to our hotel, a Holiday Inn. There we encountered more bad news: the electricity was out due to the massive snowstorm and they couldn’t check us into the hotel. So we sat in the hotel restaurant and drank, and we made friends with a New York high school principal who told horror stories of being stranded at the Frankfurt airport for days due to the snow. We split a burger and fries. The power eventually came back on and we checked in.

That night, like every night we experienced at the Holiday Inn, several people ran yelling through the halls around 3:00 AM. We were not happy.

The next morning, Christmas Day, dawned crisp and frigid. It was negative ten degrees Celsius, with a strong wind whipping our coats. After breakfast at the hotel (which we later discovered was not covered on our reservation—ouch!), we took a cab to Museum Island in Berlin. This unique island, situated between the Rivers Spree and Kupfergraben, holds five separate museums (Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Bode-Museum and Pergamonmuseum), each of incomparable cultural and historical importance. It is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. All the buildings suffered severe damage during WWII. It was so cold outside, huge chunks of ice floated in the rivers.

Our first stop was Neues Museum, one of the main reasons we had come to Berlin. The reason? Nefertiti’s bust is housed there. When you think of Egypt, first you think pyramids, and then you think of Tut’s death mask, but after that, most likely you think of Nefertiti’s bust. Of course, we weren’t allowed to take photographs of her, but standing in her presence was jaw-dropping. Nothing can prepare you for the beauty of that artifact.

We had been told on the phone that no cameras were allowed in the museum, but it turns out that was inaccurate. So Michael took a cab back to the hotel and grabbed the camera while I waited on the first floor of the Egyptian museum. Then, we snapped a zillion pictures of the artifacts in the Neues. The Neues holds the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History and various artifacts from the Collection of Classical Antiquities. Archaeological treasures like Nefertiti, the Armana collection, and the green head, combine with the Museum of Prehistory and Early History, such as the skull of the Neanderthal from Le Moustier or Heinrich Schliemann’s collection of Trojan Antiquities. Below are a few favorites.

The famous "green head"

WWII shrapnel and bullet holes in the museum walls

After the Neues, we hit the Altes Museum. Here we saw artifacts from the Etruscans and Romans, as well as Greek art. We also had a bite of quiche at the café. It was dry.

We were then thrilled to discover that the Pergamonmuseum, a museum we’d been dying to see, wasn’t closed like we had been told. So we headed there. This amazing museum involves the monumental reconstruction of archaeological buildings from places like Turkey. Some of the reconstructions include the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, the Ishtar Gate, the Processional Way of Babylon, and the Mshatta Façade. It was breathtaking.

Yeah, they reconstructed this brick by brick

Our feet were getting tired by this point, but we braved one more museum. The Bode-Museum was filled with medieval and Renaissance religious art. Although we didn’t enjoy it as much as the artifacts or the reconstructed buildings we’d already seen, I think it was just because we’d been spoiled. If the Bode’s exhibit had been in Tennessee, I would rave about it.

After four museums and being on our feet all day, we went back to the hotel and had steaks and tomato soup at the hotel restaurant. Nothing else was open on the holiday. In all, it was a wonderful Christmas Day.